Concepts for Central Indian DLC

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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@Tyranno13 @Apocalypso4826 I agree elephants in the roaster provide for new opportunities for more unique civ designs and it is unwise to go into a thread that is about South Asia or South East Asia and then call out for no elephant. But I think a balance should be maintained to appeal as many players as possible. Both the above civs can have Knights or Cav Archers if required to spice up things.

@TungstenBoar Indeed India is easily a compilation of 15 countries simply counting by the number of languages mentioned on the national currency notes. About 20 or more if we include the neighbouring countries too.

@UpmostRook9474 I think you have had some confusion tracing the ancestory of Royal Dynasties. They often claim foreign origins to have greater legitimacy. There are three most cited royal houses -
Somavamshi - House of Moon. They claim they are descendents of Lord Krishna (Who is said to have ruled Dwarka, a city of Gujarat which is now submerged) They have Teleological approach to law.
Suryavamshi - House of Sun. They claim they are descendents of Lord Rama (who is said to have been from Ayodhaya which maybe in Ganga Plains or somewhere in South we are not sure. Ayuthaya also lends it’s name from this mythical place.) They have Deontological approach to law.
Nāgavamshi - House of Serpents. Often with tribal / non Vedic ancestory. The word Naga is also used to refer to people from South East Asia in Indian Historiography.
There are many other houses apart from these three as well. But do not connect the location these dynasties claim to be real, they are just mythical.
Rajputs/Gurjaras claim to have been born of fire by the Hiranyagarbhadāna (gift of golden womb) Yajna. Their ancestors may be Central Asians (Huns, Scythians, Kushans, Parthians). They seem to have bribed the Brahmins via that Yajna (ritual) in order to get a place within Varna Hierarchy as the Kshatriyas. This is recorded in Mount Abu Inscription.

Both Deccanis and Kalingans are conglomerates. I could have instead gone for the ethnicities like Kannadigas, Marathis, Deccani Muslims/Telingas, Telugus, Oriyas, Gonds separately but I figured that would be too much to ask for while there are other conglomerates already like Gurjaras (Sindhis, Gujaratis, Rajasthanis), Hindustanis (Hindi, Pashtuns, Punjabis), Dravidians (Tamils, Tulus, Malayalam). So I broadly divided them into West (Deccanis-Marathis-Rashtrakutas) and East (Kalingans-Oriyas-Gangas) based on region Deccan and Kalinga.

@SMUM15236 No, the Kalingans are represented as the Bengalis in most Campaigns and Dravidians at one place while Rashtrakutas are represented as Gurjaras or Dravidians in different campaigns randomly. You need to recheck.

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Put aside Kalingans, I don’t think that changes the fact that Deccanis can be represented by the Hindustanis.

The way the game currently judges Indian political entities is roughly that, except for direct ethnic affiliations, Muslim entities are represented by Hindustani people, Aryan Hindus are represented by Gurjaras, Aryan Buddhists are represented by Bengalis, and then the Hindus in South are represented by Dravidians.
The Sinhalese is the most notable exception. They are Aryan, do not belong to the Dravidian ethnic group and believe in Buddhism, which is quite different from the current Dravidian civ and closer to the Bengali civ but is covered by the former. Overall, this is a delicate way of splitting the original Indians with just a DLC.

If I were to introduce a new Indian civ, I would look for one that had as little connection to the current ones as possible and keep the above mechanic functioning as much as possible. I would first pick the Sinhalese, based on their differences from the Dravidians and their geographical distance from the Bengalis. Then, I would most likely go with the Kalachuris because at least so far I don’t see any actual or claimed relationship between their origins and the Bengalis, Dravidians, Gurjaras/Rajputs and Hindustani. The Kalachuris seemed to have been at war with the surrounding entities, like the Bengalis, Dravidians and Gurjaras can be enemy if there is a campaign based on King Lakshmikarna.

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I’m fine with that but I see how the community responds to such designs like Shrivamsha riders. They’d have such units strictly severely inferior to the knight line to the point where its nearly useless in most situations except some team games or niche maps. People seem to prefer symmetry over asymmetry.

Yes but that’s what makes a good civ. Elephant or infantry bonuses are fine for some casual tgs but not really useful for competitive games given the current balance and map generations.

Maybe cool but not usable in most situations.

You don’t have to get cynical, I’m not against Indian civs but rather asymmetry. For me civ is just a name associated with a set of bonuses and tech tree. India, Africa, Antartica you can give me a civ with any name or from any part of the world, if it has all the necessary units and a competitive economy, that’s great.

As far as the current Indian civs, Hindustanis have those 4 but not the other three. If the rest of the civs did have them, people would be playing them a lot for ranked games but those 3 are least played civs on ladder. Gurjaras used to be good but got overnerfed due to their asymmetry, a consequence of meta players’ resistance to change and their trend of calling nerfs to new units. This is exactly the reason why I wouldn’t recommend more Indian DLCs. First water gameplay, infantry, towers, elephants should be reworked well before making another DLC with unusable units.

That’s good then but I think it be unusual for 2 newly introduced Indian civs to have such units while 3 others don’t. But if they can co-exist, sure why not.

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The Shrivamsha Rider is the way it is because of how the Gurjaras function. The civ is all about hard-counters, and the Shrivamsha Rider follows that exact design principle.

So you agree that there is interesting design space for more South Asian civs.

Elephant Archers and Armoured Elephants seem fine to me. Battle Elephants are the red-headed step-child.

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@UpmostRook9474 I understand your point about representation of Deccani Muslims with Hindustanis but what about the others in Deccan Region i.e. Marathis, Kannadigas? In terms of dynasties I am talking about Empires of Yādavas, Satavahanas, Rashtrakutas, Chalukyas. The region will remain a hole in the map.

I am also fine with the introduction of Sinhalese but they will be low on my priority list just because they are too small and did not really interact with anyone beyond Dravidians and Kalingans (if introduced). One of their king named Javaka was of Malay ancestory but that’s it. Just check map on how small they are. Also if you are just measuring Sinhalese in terms of uniqueness, then what about Ahoms and Kashmiris.

Ahoms were ruled by Tai-Ahoms who had their own unique animist religions. They were a matrilineal society and were the first in the subcontinent to have actual cannons which we have records they acquired by defeating the Chutia Kingdom.

Kashmir was for a large part of it’s history ruled by tribals called Damarās. These tribal mobility rulers desecrated their own temples whenever there was a cash shortage. Their economy depended on gold
from silk road and from gold washed away by indus river. They also relied heavily on Kashmiraj/Saffron as a Cash Crop. Neighbouring Turk Shahi and Hindu Shahi Kingdoms also had similar tribal dominance. You can say while Indian Subcontinent went through Feudalism from 4th Century to 12th Century, Kashmir was the only exception because it never had cash shortage. To read more about the cruel gruesome history of Kashmir just google about Queen Didda’s iron rule or about the looting raids Lalitaditya Muktapida carried out or about unspeakable cruel Unmattavanti.

Perhaps we can have some Sinhalese, Ahoms, Kashmiri, etc. units in Map Editor like we have the Sosso Guard, Sunda Fighter, Amazon Warrior, Iroquois Warrior and Sogdian Cataphract to represent the smaller civilizations?

@Pulikesi25 I don’t think there is any such hard and fast rule here. We can definitely make some unique designs. For example Mongolians and Vietnamese are unique with Steppe Lancers and Battle Elephants but they coexist with other East Asian Civs.

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His name is chandrabanu and he was a malay invader holding the northern kingdom for a while.That guy has nothing to do with sinhaleese civi.

P.S Sinhalese fought against dravidians portuguese malays(chandrabanu) chinese and burmese.so not so isolated as you think.

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Okay. My bad then.

I think they can be the civ.

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Ok yes you are right they also fought with Chinese when they landed with their treasure ship. And also Portuguese. Sorry I forgot everything beyond mediaeval age. My bad.
But when did they fight Burmese? I am not aware.

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12th century parakramabahu invaded both south india and burma.

Also ming treasure fleet and portuguese invasions both fall under ingame time period.portuguese landed in 1505.

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If you’re making civs like Mongols, I’m definitely in favor of an Indian DLC.

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@Mahazona Thank you for sharing. That was some information I didn’t know. Increased my insight of Sinhalese history.

@Pulikesi25 I would imagine a Kashmiri Civilization will definitely fill that role very well. But unfortunately it will be on low priority because I understand development takes time and we have a lot of civs to cover across the world.

@SMUM15236 I agree renaming Dravidians to Tamils and then using Kannadigas instead of Deccanis will be a better solution.

PS: I tried to edit the first post of this thread to include map editor units from Assam, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Punjab, Gondwana, Nagalim, Rajputana etc. as well but unfortunately I am unable to edit it now.

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You can write to moder to do this. 50 / 50% chance.

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Kannadigas would fill the central India position very well, while Tamils will cover the kingdoms of the far south. The Kerala region was in fact part of the broader Tamil area (i.e. the Chera Dynasty). This way India i regions are all broadly represented. Gurjaras(representing the Rajputs, Gujaratis/Malwa area), Bengalis representing Eastern India - Kalinga and Bengal/Bihar/Assam, Kannadigas representing Central India/Deccan Plateau and Hindustanis representing the Indian Islamic polities - Bahmanis, Delhi Sultanate/Ghurids and the Bahmani Sultanate. I am also not opposed to the Sinhalese being another civilisation of the insular South.

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So like what are the actual bonuses and tech trees??

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Marathis: Dravidians.
Kannadigas: Dravidians.
Ahoms: now Burmese but eventually potential Siamese.
Kashmiris: basically Hindustanis, but maybe sometime Gurjaras (for emphasizing Hindu belief) or even Tatars (for Turk Shahis), Persians and potential Sogdians (for Hunas).

In addition to being directly divided by ethnic origin, they are also roughly divided by religion (Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism) and geographical location (north or south). Clearly this way that the game currently judges Indian political entities is not always be appropriate in classifying all historical subcontinental political entities, but it is a compromise that is indeed needed now. Even the Kalachuris can somehow be classified as Gurjaras in this way, and I think personally I can accept it.

Frankly speaking, I don’t really hold on to which groups are most suitable for the new Indian civs. I just choose what I think is the most suitable from what I know, while there is obviously more Indian history that I don’t know clearly than I do. The only thing I relatively insist on is that the new Indian DLC should be a long time later, in the unforeseen future.

He, Chandrabanu, was a Malay invader for about 40 years.

There are several obvious reasons for introducing Sinhalese. Firstly, as the main ethnic group in today’s sovereign country of Sri Lanka, they will be quickly and easily understood by the world who are not familiar with the history of South Asia through the simple impression of being the Sri Lankans. Secondly, They are most alien to the current classification rules as being Buddhist but very south. Thirdly, they already exist in the game as AI players in the campaign.

As others have said, they were not really isolated. May afraid the Aztecs, Ethiopians, Incas, Japanese, Koreans, Malians, and Mayans don’t have as many existing civs they can interact with as the Sinhalese have.

While you have opinions with the Sinhalese but not with the Kalachuris?

This is not a problem. Anyone can enter the game this way, whether they are already a playable civ or not.
I even proposed introducing a dog sled to give the Inuits a simple in-game representation.

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Dravidians is just a silly umbrella, honestly. Not saying that we need an split rn, but they should have been called Tamils

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I agree with all of these points but TT vise it might be too similar to dravidians with terrible cavalry options.Deccan can be a better fit TT vise as they can have camels elephants cav archers etc.

If going by religious lines there are the Sikhs who are complete different but more towards the latter part of the game timeline.

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In my Krishnadevaraya and Conqueror Tales (Hindustani) campaigns, I used Gurjaras to represent the Deccan States, and Dravidians to represent the Vijayanagar Empire.

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I don’t think lacking knights is a good restriction. Unlike native american civs lacking cavalry entirely it has no historical justification and it’s clearly just a bad reference to AoE3 Indians (which are very poorly designed imo)

And AoE2 elephants suck in general, or at least battle elephants do. People are so afraid of them becoming too OP that they were instead made almost completely useless.

Edit: and before anyone claims that “knights were an Europe only thing” like always, almost 100% of all non-unique units are based on European military anyway, Knights are just where people draw the line for some reason.

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PersonalIy I’m fine with the name of Dravidians, but I won’t mind to change it too.

The Sinhalese is supposed to be an archer civ but more like Bengalis than Dravidians. If I design this civ, I would likely give good archers, monks, sieges and towers, and give them average naval power (at least fully upgraded Galleons). Well, Not a serious but random idea.

  • A farming bonus or even a unique building based on their ancient Irrigation works.
  • A relic bonus or even a UT based on the tooth of the Buddha.
  • A UT to simply give archers +10% speed, with a name like Vedda Scouts or something else.
  • Flail Elephant might be the unique upgrade or the replacement to the Siege Elephant and has a range of 1 as a feature.
  • Probably lack Blast Furnace.

I’m not sure people would welcome a civilization based on believers, but I think they’re too late. Although they overlap with the last 1-2 centuries of the timeline, their real heyday was in the AoE3 timeline, and we should have earlier and better choices in AoE2.

If you want an Indian civilization with horses, Kalachuris and Kalingans should both be able to satisfy it.